Tag: alcohol

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Daily Pook-Emu Bee links ceased being daily for the last week and change, but perhaps it is back with two straight editions to start the new week.

1 | Calibre 9.15 E-Book Manager Introduces “Create Your Own Adventure” Writing Game (Marcus Nestor for 9 To 5 Linux. Sep. 28, 2026.)
While I disable (or don’t enable) AI functionality in Calibre, I opined last year that some of the integrations were relatively inoffensive and in line with Calibre’s purpose. I’d say I fear Calibre is losing the plot (get it!?) with this one. However, it is not enabled by default and the new release includes some interesting normal features, so as long as the plot is lost on the side…

2 | NYC refuses to remove massive hornets’ nest from Queens tree, tells terrified residents to foot the bill (Rich Calder for the New York Post. Sep. 19, 2026.)
If (heaven forbid) this situation goes sideways after the NYC Parks Department both refused to step in and warned that it would block any efforts by the residents to remedy, NYC (i.e., taxpayers) will most certainly foot the bill.

3 | Ancient bronze bracelets found in Uzbekistan (The History Blog. Sep. 16, 2026.)
You never know what you’ll dig up in your yard in Uzbekistan.

4 | Three Patrons, Three Clients: The Mecca Alliance No One Owns (Ahmed Saber Abbas for War on the Rocks. Sep. 15, 2026.)
If only Saudi Arabia had some alternative proposal in front of it.

5 | Nearly one third of college-age ‘BORG’ drinkers report blacking out: New study (W.B. Kagan for EurekAlert! Sep. 15, 2026.)
This ends with a suggestion for parents to discuss with their college-age students “whether to attend a BORG event, and if one does attend, whether to bring a BORG beverage and how much (if any alcohol to put in the beverage.” That’s great but let’s try cutting this off at “event” and making the answer “no.”

6 | Holdout Lindsay Clancy Juror Breaks Silence, Says “Activists” Wanted “Not Guilty” on Day 1 (Steven Ertelt for Life Site. Sep. 16, 2026.)
He shouldn’t have had to break silence, but now that he has been left with no choice, I tip my hat to Mr. Michael P. Desronvil for having the courage to do the right thing.

7 | Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2,000 °C (Michelle Starr for Science Alert. Sep. 9, 2026.)
I don’t know. Our current ice works well enough. The scientists should focus on something more practical.

8 | The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Rawdawg (Lauren Peck for Austin Chronicle. Nov. 27, 2024.)
That this running club was obnoxious enough to be cracked down on in Austin sounds like an accomplishment (and well-deserved as someone who finds our less noisy running clubs here in New York City annoying enough as is).

9 | I saw the movie that Warner tried to delete: ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ (Bryan Preston for Fox Business. Sep. 12, 2026.)
While my 16+ year streak of not being in a movie theater continues, this does sound like a fun movie and one that was well-worth saving.

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Delayed by work, but not denied, The drags on, Pook-Emu Bee links for April 23, 2026.

1. Hochul’s Fast-Track Booze Permit Sets Stage for World Cup Street Parties Across New York (Reid Carlisle for Hoodline. April 22, 2026.)

Their desperation to pretend that the World Cup is happening in New York City continues to lead to public nuisance as public policy.

2. Listening to criticism (Andrés at Wawawa Comics. April 22, 2026.)

But my art teacher hated my work so much, I could hear his sighs every time I walked into the classroom, haha. One day he told me, “You should quit. You don’t have a future in drawing.”

No one needed to tell me that I didn’t have a future in drawing. I knew. But this inspires me. If Andrés could overcome that to make a popular online comic with cute little animal characters, I can do the same (with crooked stick figures).

3. 3. 8.1.0 — By the Numbers (Matthias Pfefferle at ActivityPub for WordPress. April 22, 2026.)

I have upgraded and see the new statistics chart. Fancy.

4. Read-Only Address Book (Brian Tremblay at BTrem. April 5, 2026.)

We begin with a question…

Can Thunderbird’s RSS support be extended to enable address book subscriptions?

I am all for creative RSS use-cases (albeit I don’t have a need for a read-only address book).

5. New flat M.2 SSD adapter doesn’t stick out from the motherboard, unlocking PCIe slots hidden under massive GPUs — JEYI’s new ‘ArcherX’ AIC lays completely flush and supports PCIe 4.0 speeds (Hassan Nasir for Tom’s Hardware. April 19, 2026.)

I’m not struggling for storage space but this does look like a neat expansion idea.

6. A Defense of the NBA Play-In Tournament (Neil Paine. April 14, 2026.)

I wouldn’t go so far to defend it and one could probably make a credible argument that it has made “tanking” worse (teams that want to guarantee a spot in the draft lottery need to finish 11th or worse instead of 9th), but it is not bad as far as NBA gimmicks go. I agree with Mr. Paine in full on one point:

My biggest complaint with it might simply be that its stats don’t count anywhere — they neither belong to the regular season nor the playoffs, so player accomplishments this week live in a weird record-keeping no-man’s land. But this would be easily corrected by simply counting them as playoff stats, which I think is plenty defensible.

That will soon be a “thing I learned” post.

7. Cherry Blossoms (2026 edition) (David Billa for Liminal Web. April 12, 2026.)

Many pretty cherry blossom photos. It is warm in Brooklyn today, so it feels seasonal (some of our cherry blossoms are coming in).